Memories of Kargil war through Kashmir lens
‘There can never be good memories of a war’
The Kargil War, also known as the Kargil conflict, was India’s first televised war. Scores of television and print journalists covered the ‘yuddh’ or ‘jang’. Foreign journalists from around the globe reached Kargil to cover various facets of the bloody conflict. For some scribes this event marked the beginning of their career in journalism. As the Kargil War completes 16 years, Rising Kashmir’s Daanish Bin Nabi weaves an interesting narrative based on the recollections and stories of Kashmiri journalists who covered the blood-spattered mini-war way back in May-July 1999.
Yusuf Jameel: One of the Kashmir valley’s veteran journalists, Jameel presently reports for The Deccan Chronicle. “We were unsure whether we will be able to see the next morning or not. There was a barrage of fire coming from every side of the Kargil valley. And we did not know who was firing at what,” he says. About the total causalities, he says, “it very difficult to tell. We were always dependent on what the two sides involved in the conflict had to say.” Jameel would focus on the emotional impact of the war on the civilians and soldiers. “I would always do color piece, implying the feelings of the civilians, about Army personnel and overall situation.” He says that electronic media dominated the coverage. “The army had to display their courage to keep the morale of their men going. Reporters from print media would struggle to get the stories. Discrimination between print and electronic media was evident,” he says. Jameel also had to worry about the well-being of his family back home. “I would always think about my family. I vividly remember that once I was inside a bunker with a family. The father of the children was very worried and moved from one side of the bunker to the other, only to keep his children safe. On seeing this I was moved. I wept and missed my family the most.” Jameel reported for the Asian Age newspaper then.
Farooq Javed Khan: As Valley’s well-known photojournalists, Farooq Khan covered the Kargil conflict extensively for Pioneer. He now works for the European Press Agency (EPA). “For me, as a photojournalist, covering the Kashmir conflict has been one of the most daunting tasks. But covering the Kargil War was something exciting and life threatening at the same time. There was constant shelling from the Pakistani side. We were, as someone would say, experts in covering encounters between the militants and army, which would happen on a regular basis in Kashmir. But covering the war was a different experience altogether,” says Khan. Journalists were unaware what was going to happen the next moment. Khan explains, “we did not know what was going to happen in next five minutes, such was the impact of shelling from the other side (Pakistan). We always used to cover the regular encounters in Kashmir from some safer place, but in Kargil we couldn’t find a single place that could have been described as ‘safe’. In simple words, it was hell!”
Shujaat Buharki: Like others, covering the Kargil conflict was a different experience. “Travelling during the nights, staying in hotels where shells would land intermittently was a horrific experience,” says Bukhari. One of the problems was communication breakdown. “One of the daunting tasks hurdles in covering war was the communication. It was the biggest problem. I had to literally dictate my copy to the desk at Chennai over a satellite phone. There can never be good memories of a war. Obviously it was very tough. Kargil was cut off from the rest of the world. It was entirely unwise on part of Pakistan to attack Kargil,” he says. Bukhari reported the conflict for The Hindu.
Sheikh Tariq: According to Tariq he was among the first camera persons to reach Kargil to cover the war. “I was working for the Asian News International (ANI) as Bureau Chief and was out on the field for 73 days. I had a narrow escape,” he recalls. “I was nearing Tiger Hill in Drass sector. An Army camp was attacked by a huge bomb from the other side. There was a ‘Mandir’ (Temple) nearby. Somehow I managed to throw myself on the other side of the ‘Mandir’ and escaped, luckily,” he says. But this was not the end. Tariq had another dreadful experience. “The second time I was again lucky. While I was on my way to Drass from Kargil a bomb exploded in front of us. Luckily, an Army vehicle was just in front of us. The bomb exploded and damaged the army vehicle, injuring many soldiers as well. Again, I’d say it was a miraculous escape,” he says. There were no Outside Broadcast (OB) vans available those days. “We had to record everything on cassettes, which was a difficult task. For a single shot we had to risk our lives. On the very first day I had to travel back to Srinagar. On the very same night had to travel to Jammu by road to deposit my recorded cassettes because the airport at Srinagar was closed for security reasons. Capturing images was a tough job. We used to switch off the lights of our vehicles to avoid the risk of being fired from the other side,” he says. Currently, Tariq works as chief cameraman for NDTV 24/7.
Touseef Mustafa: Mustafa has been working as photojournalist for Paris based Agency France Presse (AFP) for more than 15 years now. He too has covered the Kargil War. “The most awful incident occurred to me during my stay in Drass sector. One of the shells struck an oil tanker, the army covering the areas left their weapons and other material behind. For two hours we were under heavy artillery fire. In Kashmir, we were covering insurgency but when we went to Kargil we saw gunship. It was entirely new experience for us. On our first visit we did not know that it was a war between two countries, we simply took it as a case of simple insurgency operation. But as the days went by we understood this was something very different and difficult,” Mustafa says. Because there were no digital cameras available then, he had to shoot with traditional film cameras. “It was hell to cover the war, as every second there was threat to one’s life,” he adds.
Feedback at daanishnabi@gmail.com
Published in Rising Kashmir on July 10, 2015
